Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:36:12 PM
I have a suggestion for a thesis by some bright college student. Someone should write his or her thesis on how much damage is done in America by rich stupid people. I'm not (just) referring to dumb celebrities (think Barbra Steisand) or rich, dumb politicians (Michael Bloomberg is one of these). I'm thinking of someone like T. Boone Pickens, who is self-financing (I think) a media blitz of his idiot ideas about power generation in the near future. He is suggesting that wind and solar power can generate the power we need in the future. This is not only stupid, it is dangerous stupidity, and it plays into the hands of the enemies of America. Wind and solar power are decades away from feasability (sp?), if they ever reach it at all. At best they may someday provide 10% of our energy needs. (I'll bet they never reach even that level.) OPEC has to love the sight of Pea Brain Pickens saying over and over on TV and radio that this is a problem "we can't drill our way out of". Yes, we most assuredly can drill our way out of it. We wouldn't even be in it if bonehead Bill Clinton hadn't vetoed drilling in a dim, dark, desolate corner of ANWR 13 YEARS ago! While the Democrats desperately seek to avoid blame for the mess they've created and the exploding gas prices their scientific-ignoramus policies have brought us, fools like "Windy" Pickens help them with multi-million dollar campaigns of lies and/or foolish ideas across the struggling nation.
It all reminds me of that other rich bonehead, Warren Buffett, who often bobs up to tell us that we should raise the marginal tax rates on the rich. Easy for you to say, Warren -- you already have your millions. As economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out time and again, high marginal tax rates on earnings are paid by the rich; they are paid by those attemping to become rich. The real-life effect is to stifle the efforts of exactly those talented individuals whose talent and drive produces the progress of our economy (I'm sure I could phrase this better, but I'm running out of lunch time). Bad, bad idea.
By the way, I've heard that Warren "Raise my Taxes" Buffett has lately been devoting his time and talent to finding loopholes in the law to enable him to avoid those higher marginal tax rates he is championing. Another rich liberal hypocrit. How stunning.